Quick sketch: mid-size sports sedan

As I continue to sketch cars, I feel like I’m learning quite a bit. This latest car drawing revealed some very important (and somewhat frustrating) things to me:

First of all, I am having a heck of a time trying to get the front and rear ends of these cars to look good. I can sketch the overall shape of the body without much effort, but I feel like I’m totally lost when it comes to designing attractive front and rear ends! I think it’s the little details that kill me – I’m a professional designer, and I have a pretty good sense of what looks good (and not)…but wow. It seems like most everything I sketch is horribly proportioned and a bit too “cartoonish”. More specifically in regards to this drawing, I had lots of trouble trying to figure out how the trunk lid transitioned into the tail lights. The roof line on this car is very aggressive, and I fought to try and find a smooth way of blending into the trunk. I ended up with a very hard transition which I think doesn’t look too bad – but perhaps the lower bumper is too weak (the tail lights overpower it).

The other thing I’m starting to see is that I really need to work on my line quality. I’ve seen some black and white pencil sketches from some of my car designer friends, and they totally blow me away. This sketch of mine does not – I think I will need to get more aggressive with my lines to give my drawings more punch. And now that I think about it, that is pretty much in line with what I heard from my instructors back in design school. I need to quit being so darn technical and loosen up!